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76-739: Some web browsers (e.g., Firefox ) use OCSP to validate HTTPS certificates, while others have disabled it. Most OCSP revocation statuses on the Internet disappear soon after certificate expiration. Certificate authorities (CAs) were previously required by the CA/Browser Forum to provide OCSP service, but this requirement was removed in August 2023, instead making CRLs required again. Let's Encrypt has announced their intention to end OCSP service as soon as possible, citing privacy concerns and operational simplicity. An OCSP responder (a server typically run by

152-421: A copyleft base must come with the source code, and the source code must be available under the same or a similar license. This offers protection against proprietary software consuming code without giving back. Richard Stallman stated that "the central idea of copyleft is to use copyright law, but flip it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, [copyright] becomes

228-450: A digital equivalent where the user must click to accept. Open-source software has an additional acceptance mechanism. Without permission from the copyright holder, the law prohibits redistribution. Therefore, courts treat redistribution as acceptance of the license terms. These can include attribution provisions or source code provisions for copyleft licenses. Developers typically achieve compliance without lawsuits. Social pressures, like

304-514: A few years, Microsoft gained a dominant position in the browser market for two reasons: it bundled Internet Explorer with its popular Windows operating system and did so as freeware with no restrictions on usage. The market share of Internet Explorer peaked at over 95% in the early 2000s. In 1998, Netscape launched what would become the Mozilla Foundation to create a new browser using the open-source software model. This work evolved into

380-593: A file-based definition, the CPL and EPL use a module-based definition, and the FSF's own LGPL refers to software libraries. License compatibility determines how code with different licenses can be distributed together. The goal of open-source licensing is to make the work freely available, but this becomes complicated when working with multiple terminologies imposing different requirements. There are many uncommonly used licenses and some projects write their own bespoke agreements. As

456-459: A license covers free and open-source software. There is significant diversity among individual licenses but little difference between the rival definitions. The three definitions each require that people receiving covered software must be able to use, modify, and redistribute the covered work. Eric S. Raymond was a proponent of the term " open source " over "free software". He viewed open source as more appealing to businesses and more reflective of

532-436: A means of keeping software free." Free software licenses are also open-source software licenses. The separate terms free software and open-source software reflect different values rather than a legal difference. Both movements and their formal definitions require the covered work to be made available with source code and with permission for modification and redistribution. There are occasional edge cases where only one of

608-565: A more specific and objective standard for the FOSS that Debian would host in their repositories. The OSI adopted the DSFG and used them as the basis for their Open Source Definition. The Free Software Foundation maintains a rival set of criteria, the Free Software Definition. Historically, these three organizations and their sets of criteria have been the notable authorities in determining whether

684-424: A patent retaliation clause. Patent retaliation, or patent suspension, clauses take effect if a licensee initiates patent infringement litigation on covered code. In that situation, the patent grants are revoked. These clauses protect against patent trolling . Copyleft licenses require source code to be distributed with software and require the source code to be made available under a similar license. Like

760-457: A range of devices, including desktops , laptops , tablets , and smartphones . By 2020, an estimated 4.9 billion people had used a browser. The most-used browser is Google Chrome , with a 67% global market share on all devices, followed by Safari with 18%. A web browser is not the same thing as a search engine , though the two are often confused. A search engine is a website that provides links to other websites. However, to connect to

836-474: A response need not be the same key that signed the certificate. The certificate's issuer may delegate another authority to be the OCSP responder. In this case, the responder's certificate (the one that is used to sign the response) must be issued by the issuer of the certificate in question, and must include a certain extension that marks it as an OCSP signing authority (more precisely, an extended key usage extension with

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912-400: A result, this causes more confusion than other legal aspects. When releasing a collection of applications, each license can be considered separately. However, when attempting to combine software, code from another project can only be in-licensed if the project uses compatible terms and conditions. When combining code bases, the original licenses can be maintained for separate components, and

988-602: A similar license. Since the mid-2000s, courts in multiple countries have upheld the terms of both types of license. Software developers have filed cases as copyright infringement and as breaches of contract. Intellectual property (IP) is a legal category that treats creative output as property, comparable to private property . Legal systems grant the owner of an IP the right to restrict access in many ways. Owners can sell, lease, gift, or license their properties. Multiple types of IP law cover software including trademarks , patents , and copyrights . Most countries, including

1064-562: A validity period of multiple days. Thus, the replay attack is a major threat to validation systems. OCSP can support more than one level of CA. OCSP requests may be chained between peer responders to query the issuing CA appropriate for the subject certificate, with responders validating each other's responses against the root CA using their own OCSP requests. An OCSP responder may be queried for revocation information by delegated path validation (DPV) servers. OCSP does not, by itself, perform any DPV of supplied certificates. The key that signs

1140-408: A website's server and display its web pages, a user must have a web browser installed. In some technical contexts, browsers are referred to as user agents . The purpose of a web browser is to fetch content and display it on the user's device. This process begins when the user inputs a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), such as https://en.wikipedia.org/ , into the browser. Virtually all URLs on

1216-616: Is a design that identifies the distinct source of a product. Because they distinguish products, the same designs can be used in different fields where there is no risk of confusing similar sources. To give up control of a trademark would result in the loss of that trademark. Therefore, no open-source license freely offers the use of a trademark. Trademark restrictions can overlap copyrights and affect material otherwise freely available. The US Supreme Court described using trademark law to restrict public domain content as "mutant copyright". In Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. ,

1292-452: Is a set of conditions under which actions otherwise restricted by IP laws are permitted. Under the bare license interpretation, advocated by the FSF, a case is brought to court by the copyright holder as copyright infringement . Under the contract interpretation, a case can be brought to court by an involved party as a breach of contract . US and French courts have tried cases under both interpretations. Non-profit organizations like FSF and

1368-426: Is also covered by other forms of IP. Major open-source licenses written since the late 1990s contain patent grants. These open-source patent grants cover the patents held by the developers. Software patents cover ideas and, rather than a specific implementation, cover any implementation of a claim . Patent claims give the holder the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing products based on

1444-477: Is built into many operating systems , web browsers , and other network software due to the popularity of HTTPS and the World Wide Web . Web browser A web browser is an application for accessing websites . When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on

1520-401: Is captured by a malicious intermediary and replayed to the client at a later date after the subject certificate may have been revoked. OCSP allows a nonce to be included in the request that may be included in the corresponding response. Because of high load, most OCSP responders do not use the nonce extension to create a different response for each request, instead using presigned responses with

1596-574: Is how they define derivative works covered by the reciprocal provisions. The GPL, and the Affero License (AGPL) based on it, use a broad scope to describe affected works. The AGPL extends the reciprocal obligation in the GPL to cover software made available over a network. They are called strong copyleft in contrast to the weaker copyleft licenses often used by corporations. Weak copyleft uses narrower, explicit definitions of derivative works. The MPL uses

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1672-533: Is more comprehensive and explicit. The Apache Software Foundation wrote it for their Apache HTTP Server . Version 2, published in 2004, offers legal advantages over simple licenses and provides similar grants. While the BSD and MIT licenses offer an implicit patent grant, the Apache License includes a section on patents with an explicit grant from contributors. Additionally, it is one of the few permissive licenses with

1748-753: Is significant for users accustomed to keyboard shortcuts . The most popular desktop browsers also have sophisticated web development tools . Web browsers are popular targets for hackers , who exploit security holes to steal information, destroy files , and other malicious activities. Browser vendors regularly patch these security holes, so users are strongly encouraged to keep their browser software updated. Other protection measures are antivirus software and being aware of scams . Open-source license Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict

1824-404: Is the continual process where developers can build on the derivative works of each other and combine their projects into collective works. Explicitly making covered code sublicensable provides a legal advantage when tracking the chain of authorship. The BSD and MIT are template licenses that can be adapted to any project. They are widely adapted and used by many FOSS projects. The Apache License

1900-498: Is triggered when covered code is hosted or distributed. Some developers have adopted the AGPL, and others have switched to proprietary licenses with features of open-source licensing. For example, open-core developer Elastic switched from the Apache license to the "source-available" Server Side Public License . Source-available software comes with source code as a reference. Since 2010,

1976-614: The Creative Commons CC0, provides a waiver of copyright claims into the public domain along with a permissive software license as a fallback. In jurisdictions that do not accept a public domain waiver, the permissive license takes effect. Public domain waivers share limitations with simple academic licenses. This creates the possibility that an outside party could attempt to control a public domain work via patent or trademark law. Public domain waivers handle warranties differently from any type of license. Even very permissive ones, like

2052-559: The European Court of Justice noted in the 2012 SAS Institute case that "ideas and principles which underlie [computer program] interfaces are not protected by copyright". In a similar 2021 case , the US Supreme Court permitted the recreation of an API in a transformative product under fair use . A long-debated subject within the FOSS community is whether open-source licenses are "bare licenses" or contracts . A bare license

2128-553: The Firefox browser, first released by Mozilla in 2004. Firefox's market share peaked at 32% in 2010. Apple released its Safari browser in 2003; it remains the dominant browser on Apple devices, though it did not become popular elsewhere. Google debuted its Chrome browser in 2008, which steadily took market share from Internet Explorer and became the most popular browser in 2012. Chrome has remained dominant ever since. By 2015, Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with Edge for

2204-483: The GNU General Public License (GPL). Traditional, proprietary software licenses are written with the goal of increasing profit , but Stallman wrote the GPL to increase the body of available free software. His reciprocal licenses offer the rights to use, modify, and distribute the work on the condition that people must release derivative works under a license offering these same freedoms. Software built on

2280-457: The OID {iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1) security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) keyPurpose(3) ocspSigning(9)}) OCSP checking creates a privacy concern for some users, since it requires the client to contact a third party (albeit a party trusted by the client software vendor) to confirm certificate validity. OCSP stapling is a way to verify validity without disclosing browsing behavior to

2356-521: The Software Freedom Conservancy offer to hold the rights to developers' projects to enforce compliance. When a copyright expires, the work enters the public domain , and is freely available to anyone. Some creative works are not covered by copyright and enter directly into the public domain. In the early history of computing, this applied to software. Early computer software was often given away with hardware. Developed initially at MIT,

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2432-443: The US and German courts rejected these claims. They ruled that the defendants could not have legally distributed the software if the licenses were unenforceable. Courts have found that distributing software indicates acceptance of the license's terms. Physical software releases can obtain the consumer's assent with notices placed on shrinkwrap . Online distribution can use clickwrap ,

2508-477: The Windows 10 release. Since the early 2000s, browsers have greatly expanded their HTML , CSS , JavaScript , and multimedia capabilities. One reason has been to enable more sophisticated websites, such as web apps . Another factor is the significant increase of broadband connectivity in many parts of the world, enabling people to access data-intensive content, such as streaming HD video on YouTube , that

2584-497: The free software movement in response to the rise of proprietary software . The term "open source" was used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), founded by free software developers Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond . "Open source" emphasizes the strengths of the open development model rather than software freedoms. While the goals behind the terms are different, open-source licenses and free software licenses describe

2660-522: The 1980s, he started the GNU Project to create a free operating system, wrote essays on freedom, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and wrote several free software licenses. The FSF used existing intellectual property laws for the opposite of their intended goal of restriction. Instead of imposing restrictions, free software explicitly provided freedoms to the recipient. In the 90s,

2736-406: The 2004 Apache License offer explicit patent grants and limited protection from patent litigation. These patent retaliation clauses protect developers by terminating grants for any party who initiates a patent lawsuit regarding covered software. Trademarks are the only form of IP not shared by free and open-source software. Trademarks on FOSS function the same as any other trademark. A trademark

2812-511: The CA. OCSP-based revocation is not an effective technique to mitigate against the compromise of an HTTPS server's private key. An attacker who has compromised a server's private key typically needs to be in a man-in-the-middle position on the network to abuse that private key and impersonate a server. An attacker in such a position is also typically in a position to interfere with the client's OCSP queries. Because most clients will silently ignore OCSP if

2888-561: The FSF or the OSI accept a license, but the popular free software licenses are open source, including the GPL . Practical benefits to copyleft licenses have attracted commercial developers. Corporations have used and written reciprocal licenses with a narrower scope than the GPL. For example, Netscape drafted their own copyleft terms after rejecting permissive licenses for the Mozilla project. The GPL remains

2964-427: The GPL and are said to be GPL-compatible. GPL software can only be used under the GPL or AGPL. Permissive licenses are broadly compatible because they can cover separate parts of a project. Multiple licenses including the GPL and Apache License have been revised to enhance compatibility. Translation issues, ambiguity in licensing terms, and incompatibility of some licenses with the law in certain jurisdictions compound

3040-476: The MIT license, disclaim warranty and liability. Anyone using the free software must accept this disclaimer as a condition. Because public domain content is available to everyone, the copyright waiver cannot impose a disclaimer. Open-source licenses allow other businesses to commercialize covered software. Work released under a permissive license can be incorporated into proprietary software. Permissive licenses permit

3116-436: The OSI. Open-source licenses are categorized as copyleft or permissive . Copyleft licenses require derivative works to include source code under a similar license. Permissive licenses do not, and therefore the code can be used within proprietary software. Copyleft can be further divided into strong and weak depending on whether they define derivative works broadly or narrowly. Licenses focus on copyright law, but code

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3192-569: The United States (US), have created copyright laws in line with the Berne Convention . These laws assign a copyright whenever a work is released in any fixed format. Under US copyright law, the initial release is considered an original work . The creator, or their employer, holds the copyright to this original work and therefore has the exclusive right to make copies, release modified versions, distribute copies, perform publicly, or display

3268-528: The Web start with either http: or https: which means they are retrieved with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). For secure mode (HTTPS), the connection between the browser and web server is encrypted , providing a secure and private data transfer. Web pages usually contain hyperlinks to other pages and resources. Each link contains a URL, and when it is clicked or tapped ,

3344-505: The addition of new terms, including proprietary ones. Proprietary software has heavily integrated open-source code released under the Apache, BSD, and MIT licenses. Open core is a business model where developers release a core piece of software as open source and monetize a product containing it as proprietary software. The strong copyleft GPL is written to prevent distribution within proprietary software. Weak copyleft licenses impose specific requirements on derivative works that may allow

3420-536: The average person. This, in turn, sparked the Internet boom of the 1990s, when the Web grew at a very rapid rate. The lead developers of Mosaic then founded the Netscape corporation, which released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994. Navigator quickly became the most popular browser. Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. Within

3496-401: The browser navigates to the new resource. Most browsers use an internal cache of web page resources to improve loading times for subsequent visits to the same page. The cache can store many items, such as large images, so they do not need to be downloaded from the server again. Cached items are usually only stored for as long as the web server stipulates in its HTTP response messages. During

3572-409: The certificate issuer) may return a signed response signifying that the certificate specified in the request is 'good', 'revoked', or 'unknown'. If it cannot process the request, it may return an error code. The OCSP request format supports additional extensions. This enables extensive customization to a particular PKI scheme. OCSP can be vulnerable to replay attacks , where a signed, 'good' response

3648-433: The course of browsing, cookies received from various websites are stored by the browser. Some of them contain login credentials or site preferences. However, others are used for tracking user behavior over long periods of time, so browsers typically provide a section in the menu for deleting cookies. Finer-grained management of cookies usually requires a browser extension . The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb ,

3724-741: The court "caution[ed] against misuse or over-extension of trademark" law without providing a firm decision on those mutant copyrights. Trademark overlap can leave open-source and free content projects vulnerable to a "hostile takeover" if outside parties file for trademarks on derivative works. Notably, Andrey Duskin applied for trademarks on the SCP Foundation , a collaborative writing project, when creating derivative works based on SCP stories. Permissive licenses , also known as academic licenses, allow recipients to use, modify, and distribute software with no obligation to provide source code. Institutions created these licenses to distribute their creations to

3800-439: The covered code to be distributed within proprietary software in certain circumstances. Cloud computing relies on free and open-source software and avoids the distribution that triggers most licenses. Cloud software is hosted rather than distributed. A vendor hosts the software online, and their end users do not have to download, access, or even know about the code in use. The copyleft GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)

3876-399: The covered software. The BSD licenses brought the concept of academic freedom of ideas to computing. Early academic software authors had shared code based on implied promises. Berkeley made these concepts explicit with clear disclaimers for liability and warranty along with conditions, or clauses , for redistribution. The original had four clauses, but subsequent versions have further reduced

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3952-576: The idea. Because patents grant the right to exclude rather than the right to create, it is possible to have a patent on an idea but still be unable to legally implement it if the invention relies on another patented idea. Thus, open-source patent grants can offer permission only from covered patents. They cannot guarantee that a third party has not patented any concepts embodied in the code. The older permissive licenses do not discuss patents directly and offer only implicit patent grants in their offers to use or sell covered material. Newer copyleft licenses and

4028-425: The larger work released under a compatible license. This compatibility is often one-way. Public domain content can be used anywhere as there is no copyright claim, but code acquired under any almost any set of terms cannot be waved to the public domain. Permissive licenses can be used within copyleft works, but copyleft material cannot be released under a permissive license. Some weak copyleft licenses can be used under

4104-480: The license, increasing the difficulties of compliance. Free and open-source software licenses have been successfully enforced in civil court since the mid-2000s. In a pair of early lawsuits— Jacobsen v. Katzer in the United States and Welte v. Sitecom in Germany—;defendants argued that open-source licenses were invalid. Sitecom and Katzer separately argued that the licenses were unenforceable. Both

4180-465: The modern usage begins with Richard Stallman's efforts to create a free operating system. In 1984, programmer Don Hopkins mailed a manual to Stallman with a "Copyleft Ⓛ" sticker. Stallman, who was working on the GNU operating system, adopted the term. An early version of copyleft licensing was used for the 1985 release of GNU Emacs . The term became associated with the FSF's later reciprocal licenses, notably

4256-521: The modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code , modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition . After 1980, the United States began to treat software as a literary work covered by copyright law. Richard Stallman founded

4332-674: The most popular license of this type, but there are other significant examples. The FSF has crafted the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) for libraries . Mozilla uses the Mozilla Public License (MPL) for their releases, including Firefox . IBM drafted the Common Public License (CPL) and later adopted the Eclipse Public License (EPL). A difference between the GPL and other reciprocal licenses

4408-519: The need for the requestor to directly contact the OCSP responder. There is wide support for OCSP amongst most major browsers: However, Google Chrome is an outlier. Google disabled OCSP checks by default in 2012, citing latency and privacy issues and instead uses their own update mechanism to send revoked certificates to the browser. Several open source and proprietary OCSP implementations exist, including fully featured servers and libraries for building custom applications. OCSP client support

4484-461: The permissive licenses, most copyleft licenses require attribution. Most, including the GPL, disclaim implied warranties. Copyleft uses the restrictions of IP law—contrary to their usual purpose—to mandate that the code remain open. The term and it's related slogan, "All rights reversed", had been previously used in a playful manner by the Principia Discordia and Tiny BASIC ;

4560-557: The pioneering video game Spacewar! was used to market and test the PDP-1 computer. According to attorney Lawrence Rosen , copyright laws were not written with the expectation that creators would place their work into the public domain. Thus intellectual property laws lack clear paths to waive a copyright. Highly permissive licenses described as "public domain" may legally function as unilateral contracts that offer something but impose no terms. A public-domain-equivalent license , like

4636-919: The potential for community backlash, are often sufficient. Cease and desist letters are a common method to bring companies back into compliance, especially in Germany. A standard process has developed in the German legal system. FOSS developers present companies with a cease and desist letter. These letters outline how to come back into compliance from a violation. German judges can issue a court-mandated cease and desist order to unresponsive companies. Civil cases proceed if these first steps fail. The German procedural laws are clear and favorable to claimants. Uncertainties remain in how different courts will handle certain aspects of licensing. For software in general, there are debates about what can be patented and what can be copyrighted. Regarding an application programming interface (API),

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4712-417: The problem of license compatibility. Downloading an open-source module is straightforward, but complying with the licensing terms can be more difficult. Because of the amount of software dependencies, engineers working on complex projects often rely on license management software to achieve compliance with the licensing terms of open-source components. Many open-source software files do not unambiguously state

4788-529: The proprietary model where small pools of secretive workers carried out this work with the development of Linux where the pool of testers included potentially the entire world. He summarized this strength as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." The OSI succeeded in bringing open-source development to corporate developers including Sun Microsystems, IBM , Netscape, Mozilla , Apache , Apple Inc., Microsoft, and Nokia. These companies released code under existing licenses and drafted their own to be approved by

4864-545: The public. Permissive licenses are usually short, often less than a page of text. They impose few conditions . Most include disclaimers of warranty and obligations to credit authors. A few include explicit provisions for patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property. The University of California, Berkeley created the first open-source license when they began distributing their Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) operating system. The BSD license and its later variations permit modification and distribution of

4940-417: The query times out, OCSP is not a reliable means of mitigating HTTPS server key compromise. The MustStaple TLS extension in a certificate can require that the certificate be verified by a stapled OCSP response, mitigating this problem. OCSP also remains a valid defense against situations where the attacker is not a "man-in-the-middle" (code-signing or certificates issued in error). The OCSP protocol assumes

5016-465: The requester has network access to connect to an appropriate OCSP responder. Some requesters may not be able to connect because their local network prohibits direct Internet access (a common practice for internal nodes in a data center). Forcing internal servers to connect to the Internet in order to use OCSP contributes to the de-perimeterisation trend. The OCSP stapling protocol is an alternative that allows servers to cache OCSP responses, which removes

5092-412: The restrictions. As a result, it's common to specify if the covered software uses a 2-clause or 3-clause version. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created an academic license based on the BSD original. The MIT license clarified the conditions by making them more explicit. For example, the MIT license describes the right to sublicense . One of the strengths of open-source development

5168-421: The same type of licenses. The two main categories of open-source licenses are permissive and copyleft . Both grant permission to change and distribute software. Typically, they require attribution and disclaim liability . Permissive licenses come from academia. Copyleft licenses come from the free software movement. Copyleft licenses require derivative works to be distributed with the source code and under

5244-528: The tangible advantages of FOSS development. One of Raymond's goals was to expand the existing hacker community to include large commercial developers. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar , Raymond compared open-source development to the bazaar , an open-air public market. He argued that aside from ethics, the open model provided advantages that proprietary software could not replicate. Raymond focused heavily on feedback , testing , and bug reports . He contrasted

5320-501: The term "open source" was coined as an alternative label for free software, and specific criteria were laid out to determine which licenses covered free and open-source software. Two active members of the free software community, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond , founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI). At Debian , Perens had proposed the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). The DFSG were drafted to provide

5396-508: The top four are made from different codebases . Safari , based on Apple 's WebKit code, is the second most popular web browser and is dominant on Apple devices, resulting in an 18% global share. Firefox , in fourth place, with about 3% market share, is based on Mozilla 's code. Both of these codebases are open-source, so a number of small niche browsers are also made from them. The most popular browsers share many features in common. They automatically log users' browsing history , unless

5472-461: The users turn off their browsing history or use the non-logging private mode . They also allow users to set bookmarks , customize the browser with extensions , and can manage user passwords . Some provide a sync service and web accessibility features. Common user interface (UI) features: While mobile browsers have similar UI features as desktop versions, the limitations of touch screens require mobile UIs to be simpler. The difference

5548-477: The work publicly. Modified versions of the original work are derivative works . When a creator modifies an existing work, they hold the copyright to their modifications. Unless the original work was in the public domain, a derivative work can only be distributed with the permission of every copyright holder. In 1980, the US government amended the law to treat software as a literary work. Software released after this point

5624-495: Was restricted by IP laws. At that time, American activist and programmer Richard Stallman was working as a graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Stallman witnessed fragmentation among software developers. He blamed the spread of proprietary software and closed models of development. To push back against these trends, Stallman founded the free software movement . Throughout

5700-517: Was created in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee . He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser , which displayed web pages on dumb terminals . The Mosaic web browser was released in April 1993, and was later credited as the first web browser to find mainstream popularity. Its innovative graphical user interface made the World Wide Web easy to navigate and thus more accessible to

5776-550: Was not possible during the era of dial-up modems . Google Chrome has been the dominant browser since the mid-2010s and currently has a 67% global market share on all devices. The vast majority of its source code comes from Google's open-source Chromium project; this code is also the basis for many other browsers, including Microsoft Edge , currently in third place with about a 5% share, as well as Samsung Internet and Opera in fifth and sixth places respectively with over 2% market share each. The other two browsers in

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